Serendipity
by Trygvasson
Summary: At the end of the world, Stellan Desean, the ill-fated Duke of Lebec, was pointlessly running away as fast as he could. He would have died with his planet, if it weren't for a strange man with a blue box. Oneshot.


**The Tide Lords and all associated characters including Stellan Desean are property of the magnificent author Jennifer Fallon. The Doctor is of course from BBC.**

Stellan Desean awoke in the cold and the dark. Or at least it resembled the dark. It may have been light on blind eyes. He wasn't sure, but he would believe anything after the day he'd had. It was definitely cold. He sat up, or tried to. The way his head immediately hit an immovable object favored the darkness theory. Tentatively, he extended a hand upwards. It hit metal about six inches above him. He ran his hand along this metal ceiling; it was curved and blended into a metal wall, which was curved and blended into a metal floor. He was lying in a dark, cold, metal tube, apparently.

There definitely weren't any of those on Jelidia, just ice. Although, come to think of it, it was entirely possible that one of the Tide Lords could create a metal tube spontaneously. Stellan couldn't imagine why they would have done so, or if they had, why they would bother putting him in it during the end of the world. But it was possible. Suddenly, Stellan found himself laughing hysterically, echoes of his own voice immediately bouncing back on him disconcertingly. He couldn't help it. He was giddy from his brush with death. Or maybe he had actually died, and this was some bizarre afterlife. If so, it like no afterlife any of Amyrantha's many churches had ever preached, or at least none of the ones Arkady had lectured him about when she was studying for her doctorate. But it was just the kind of afterlife some of those bastard gods he had been dealing with lately would come up with. Jaxyn, Stellan thought with a pang, would probably find this hilarious.

Before the former Duke of Lebec could get around to thinking more rationally, there was a grating sound, and a sudden light appeared at his feet. Someone reached into the tube, grabbed ahold of his feet, and pulled him out with a jerk. Stellan found himself lying on the floor in a large, square, very bright, still cold, still metal room. He squinted up at the figure he assumed for the time being to be his rescuer. He was very tall and rather gawky with otherworldly clothes, but otherwise looked to be a regular, rather good-looking, youngish man. The man extended an arm and helped Stellan to his feet.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it. I'm The Doctor. Who are you?"

"Oh, um, Stellan Desean. Doctor of what?"

"Rather a lot. What were you doing in the scoop?" His voice changed to an oddly monotonous and falsely polite tone as he asked the question. Before Stellan could answer, the strange man grinned. "Ha! I've always wanted to say that, ever since SV7 asked me on the sand miner—friendly robots are the best. Too bad he got brainwashed after. Anyways, how on Amyrantha did you get in there?"

Stellan blinked at the stranger, but answered politely, "I have no idea. Last thing I knew was running as fast as I could from what looked like the end of the world as we know it on Jelidia. Thank the Tide it apparently wasn't as bad as it looked."

The Doctor cocked his head at him. "That can't be right. Hang on a moment." He took out a strange metal implement like squat scepter from his pocket and fiddled with it. The end lit up and seemingly produced a high-pitched whirring sound. "Okay, now, say something. Anything. What language are you speaking?"

Stellan stared at him in confusion. "We're speaking Glaeban, obviously. Why is that a question?"

"Glaeban! Terrific! No, wait, that's impossible. You're impossible. Unless… you are saying you're from Glaeba, aren't you? You don't just randomly speak in Glaeban when you meet new people or something?"

The Doctor was decidedly odd, Stellan decided. But Stellan was nothing if not courteous; being raised in a palace as scion of Lebec tended to do that. He sighed, but stated patiently, "I am Stellan Desean, onetime Duke of Lebec, which is the wealthiest province of Glaeba. Yes, I am from Glaeba."

"Definitely impossible then. Ooh, this is going to be fun. Come on." The Doctor strode off down a corridor to their right. With nothing better to do, Stellan followed.

"What do you mean I'm impossible? Also, what is this place?"

The Doctor didn't answer immediately, and he answered the wrong question when he did. "This is a Quantum Mining vessel. The company that owns it came up with a rather brilliant economic strategy as these things go. They use instantaneous quantum-entanglement communications channels to track new mining opportunities and have an automated system to dispatch mining ships through subspace to collect valuable ores before anyone else has a chance. The ships have to be relatively small though, so they only collect the rarest elements on the initial visits." He chuckled. "It's quite a surprise for Deke Hawkins industries when they finally make it out here, and there's hardly any of the useful stuff they were expecting left. You'd think the man would have gotten wind that might have been the case after all the other alien contacts Earth has had."

Well, that made almost no sense at all. "I don't understand."

"Sorry, of course you don't if you're really a Glaeban. Your society never did get around to quantum theory or subspace. Too involved with tide lord cataclysms and genetic experiments. Um… forget what I said. You're in a great big ship designed to collect valuable minerals all by itself, no crew needed."

"Okay… If there are no crew, then why are we here?"

"I got here by accident. I was actually aiming for Earth, but I seem to have missed it by a couple million miles and probably a couple centuries too, knowing me. As for you, well, that's the question, isn't it?" The Doctor halted before a glass panel in the wall. He pointed his weird scepter at it, and the whole wall lit up. Stellan jumped backwards, startled. "Ah. I should have warned you, sorry. It's nothing to worry about, just the computer. Sort of an electronic… book… thing. Wow, it's still hard to describe a computer to premodern people. You'd think I'd have had enough practice by now… Just look: here's a map of the ship." A diagram appeared on the wall, sure enough. "And here's the mission logs… how very dull. Oh, well." Inexplicably, the "mission logs" for this distinctly non-Glaeban ship all seemed to be written in Glaeban.

The Doctor started to wander off, fiddling with his scepter again. Stellan followed and only flinched a little bit when the "computer" winked off again as they left. The Doctor swung the scepter in a small circle, then frowned at it.

"Huh. Except for us, there really is nothing here. Nothing on the computer, nothing on my scans. Weird. I usually can find something interesting to do no matter where I end up. Let's head back to the TARDIS. It's in the control room. You'll like that room. It's got windows."

With a small sigh, Stellan followed the Doctor back through the metal maze. They eventually came to a much larger room, with a number of very strange lights, dials, and symbols on the walls and tables, as well as blank wall that Stellan guessed might be another computer. There was also a large blue box unhelpfully labeled "police call box." Stellan might know the words, but the meaning of the phrase remained elusive. The Doctor strode past the box, beckoning Stellan to follow. When they reached the far wall, the Doctor pressed a button on a small panel, and large sunken blocks of the wall just disappeared. Blank gray wall was replaced with a stunning vision that looked like the clearest of night skies, except that there were enormous hunks of jagged rock floating all around them. It was quite the strangest thing Stellan had ever seen. He had no idea what he was looking at, and he didn't think this day could get any more surreal.

The Doctor grinned at him. "Neat isn't it? Bet you never had such a great view of the night sky before now. Glaeba was always a really foggy and cloudy place, as I recall…" He trailed off, and his face crinkled into a frown. He pointed his scepter out the window and clicked it. The light and noise flicked on and off. He held it to his face for a moment, as if reading something on the side. "Mining, Amyrantha, end of the world… I'm such a fool," he murmured softly. He turned to Stellan. "I'm so sorry."

Stellan stared at him blankly. "For what?"

"Well, I'm a Time Lord"—Stellan stiffened—"TIME, not tide"—Stellan relaxed slightly. "I travel around. I save planets mostly. But this time… I definitely arrived too late. Sorry."

"I don't understand."

The Doctor sighed. "As you said when we first met, you were on Jelidia running away from the end of the world. I'm afraid I have to tell you, you were right. It was the end of the world. The Tide Lords destroyed Sol 4-Amyrantha-exactly 1400 revolutions after the signing of the Shadow Proclamation. That's today."

A little numb, Stellan said, "You're saying I somehow survived the destruction of my world."

The Doctor gestured weakly out the window at the giant fragments of floating rock.

"That makes no sense."

The Doctor clapped a hand to his shoulder. "In a way, you must be the luckiest man I've met so far. It's only possible to survive in the vacuum of space for about 30 seconds for humans like you, and it's usually impossible to survive planet-destroying explosions. Fortunately for you, these Quantum Mining ships are designed to arrive the very moment… something like this happens, so they have to be virtually indestructible, and this one just so happened to materialize around you. I guess. Frankly, it's a ludicrous guess, but I can't come up with another explanation right now. You're not related to this chap I know from an alternate universe, Arthur Dent, are you? Nah, you wouldn't be. This sort of thing happened to him all the time though, at least he said it did..."

Lucky? Staring out at the charred remains of his home, and even just thinking about the past few years leading up to this moment, Stellan felt anything but lucky. He'd lost his feckless lover Jaxyn, his wife and best friend Arkady, his title, his dignity, and now the whole damn planet. And he hadn't even had a chance to apologize to Arkady properly before the tide lords turned the world on its head. He didn't say anything, just watched chunks of Amyrantha lazily slide by, occasionally ramming into each other, crumbling and melting like freshly baked apocalyptic cookies. This entire situation was absurd.

"I must say, you're handling this remarkably well."

Stellan smiled faintly. He doubted he would be so composed if he hadn't been raised to be a duke. Fortunately, even distant members of the royal family were not permitted to break down in public. Self composure was second nature. But still… "What do I do now?"

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. "What would you like to do? I could take you back to some other time on Amyrantha, or find some other planet for you, or you could just travel with me for a while, if you like."

"Back to some other _time_?"

"Time lord. I travel through time and space in the TARDIS." He gestured to the blue box.

Stellan looked at the box, looked at the destruction out the window, looked at the strange person offering to be his traveling companion. "What the hell. I'll go with you, Doctor. Just, let's not go anyplace with _tide_ lords on it, please?"

"Agreed. Allons-y, then! Fair warning, the box is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."

Stellan didn't even ask.

 **Stellan Desean is the kind of character that you love to love and keep on loving even after you find out he isn't the perfect angel you thought he was, that he's done some things he ought not. As much as I loved the bat-shit crazy ending of** ** _The Chaos Crystal_** **, I always wished Stellan had gotten a second chance. Now he does.**

 **A trivia note: SV7 was the robot commander in the 4th Doctor episode "Robots of Death," which was terrific.**

 **PS: I hope it was clear enough how the TARDIS's translation field was affecting the conversation.**


End file.
